#watch the reaction cut of hyolyn's stage for a rtk throwback of keonhee hwanwoong and seoho losing their MINDS watching her

[sanstropfremir]

episode four!! second half of the song swaps!!!

are we surprised? no! hyolyn is at the top again for the second time in a row and honestly why is anyone competing anymore. she IS the queen there is no denying it. her stage was fantastic but i was disappointed with the other two from this episode (also not surprising). it's interesting to see that some of the same problems are popping up with each of the groups, but it's subtle things that i'm not sure would be noticed by the average viewer that isn't looking specifically for them. i'll touch more on the specifics in the reviews themselves but it's making me wonder if they're systematic problems with how the groups are approaching these performances and not necessarily something that could be fixed via just the flawed voting/scoring metric of the show. anyways! personal rankings at the end as always!

viviz

costume

the traditional flamenco dress is red and black so i don't really have any complaints on that but WHY would you tear them away to reveal boring ass unsexy shorts. sexiness is not about how much skin you show it's about what you show and how you show it!! and flamenco skirts are one of THEEEE sexiest garments because they're a constant reveal/conceal and literally WHY would you actively choose not to use that in favour of trite braid appliqué shorts. i'm actually a little bit mad about that honestly.

i never though i would say this but i think everyone needs to cool it with the on-stage costume changes. i can't believe there were THREE stages this round with costume changes. it's ok you don't have rip your skirts away all the time you can just dance, it's all good.

sound

i didn't like unnatural before this and i still do not like it. i wish they had done more to encorporated the latin elements into the whole song.

lighting

i had the same problem here as i had with tbz's o sole mio stage on kingdom, there's too much red on red and it's very hard to see what's happening. i didn't actually mind the projections at all and i liked the choice to open the back screen up to show the light bars in the back. but there was definitely too much red.

staging

my favourite thing about this stage was the mirror effect with the rose petals that they used in the beginning! that was fun.

some of the choreography choices here were......strange? there was one head nod move in the first half that was quite unflattering and i'm not sure why it was included

this is probably their best staged performance so far but it still has a little bit of that same problem of excessive close ups that their first stage did. obvs i don't know how this was rehearsed or choreographed but it feels like it was a lot of small segments chunked together into a performance without a lot of care for the shape of the performance as a whole. there were relatively less wide shots and i never got a good feel of what the larger look of what the dancers were doing was and i think this stage really could have benefitted from some much bigger panache. and similar to loona's ptt stage, it feels like there's a lot of bouncing around without landing on a clear movement trajectory.

kepler

costume

i think they were trying to go for like, a combo but reverse little mermaid/alice in wonderland where the girls enter into a magic ocean themed kingdom but the concept falls off like halfway through. and the quality of their costumes is very low? and i really wish they were actually on theme, these are just vague 'cute' concept music show outfits.

the concept for pool party doesn't even have to do with water, the mv was in a roller disco! they could have very easily committed to an actual beach theme or even like, a pool/lifeguard theme like tbz's thrill ride; it would have been waayyy easier to work with and there aren't a whole lot of groups or concepts that have covered that urban summer vibe, so it would have been a much better and cleaner choice. they could have done some cute staging with throwing lifebuoys around and having pool noodle fights.

sound

why. firstly, they should NOT have remixed with rollin because this is now the third time that song has shown up and we don't need that again, and also THERE ARE MINORS IN THIS GROUP.

regardless of that, the mashup of the two songs is just not good. it feels like instead of using one song to elevate the other, they just brough the quality of both songs down.

lighting

it's...........confusing. there's two separate concepts happening here and they were not fully synthesized together, and the projections should have done a better job of being that synthesis

also i think the combination of the pink outfits and the beginning and end being predominently purple that even though i've watched the stage like five or six times at this point, all i manage to come away with is how overwhelmingly purple it is. i do like when the lighting sticks to a limited colour palette but the colours felt very oversaturated on this one.

staging

i'm struggling to find a way to put this politely but this stage was not good. there's way too many gimmicks happening and none of them really added to the performance in any tangible way. i think they could have easily paired down to just the keyhole entrance + flowers to establish the intro and maybe the ballet barres if they really felt like it, but everything else was just visual clutter and should have been cut. none of those bits had effective choreography that was necessary to the flow, it could have easily been substituted for blocking that didn't require there to be loose bubble liquid onstage and those unappealing flat shell fans. this is the second stage in a row for kepler where they have very incoherant and inexperienced performance direction and honestly, putting them into a large scale competition like this so soon after their debut is not going well for them and it wasn't particularly fair on mnet's part. this stage really exposed just how young and ill-prepared these girls are and the only reason they aren't ranking consistently last is because they probably have the biggest fanbase. in a way it's kind of the opposite problem as skz during kingdom, because at least with skz they had the ability to making good stages, they just weren't at the time and were instead being bolstered by their fans without actually improving. kepler are obviously being bolstered by their fans, but i'm kind of glad that they are in a way because they do not have the ability. if i was one of those girls and i was seeing the quality of who i was competing against i would want to crawl into a hole and die. knowing you're the youngest and weakest performers and being shown that again and again is probably so demoralizing, and i'm a little bit glad that at least they get one positive out of this.

hyolyn

costume

again i will forgive the black on black because a) it is a part of the concept and b) it's all pleather so it's reflective and we can still see everyone. i do wish she had gone a little more halle berry patent patchwork with it, but it was there on the corset so that's just a nitpick. also corsets always 10/10 choice.

sound

i'm not familiar with loona's discography so i don't know this song, but hyolyn killed it. and the addition of ptt for the dance break was soooo smart when paired with the catwoman theme, as obviously it's meant as a 'paint the town red (with blood)' villainess moment. excellent job redeeming ptt.

lighting

love love love love the moon and the 'searchlights' at the beginning (and in the middle) that all converge on her, such a great atmospheric detail. and i like that the projections are pretty sparse; there's just enough city to establish place, and the text is a nice graphic comic book nod.

staging

obviously the aerial hoop business is insane, i love that she's actually taking these rounds as challenges and learning new skills on top of doing the stages.

rather than talking that much about the physical staging (because in all honesty it's not that complicated), i think what's more impressive is how well-planned hyolyn's stages are. i talked at length about it for touch my body, but here again she shows off very meticulous attention to detail in how her performance is structured. she very consciously chose to not do a dance heavy stage even though we know she has the ability to. instead, she chose to focus on vocal performance (because she's covering a group song as a soloist) and compensate for a lack of individual choreography in a number of ways: firstly, by an absolutely spectacular opening image; secondly, by picking a theme that has very immediate visual connotations that allow the audience to do a lot of heavy lifting; and thirdly, by building very large stage pictures with her dancers. with the last round she proved that she could fill a big stage by herself and with this round she proved that she can entertain a crowd without doing insanely complex choreography. she's actively thinking about the different sides of herself that she can show as a performer and that's a lot more than anyone else on this show is doing.

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final ranking

hyolyn

brave girls

loona

wjsn

viviz

kepler

compared to the official ranking which is:

hyolyn

loona

wjsn

viviz

kepler

brave girls

which frankly? a fucking CRIME. it is heinous that that kepler stage ranked above brave girls the quality is not even close to comparable on any aspect. we knew the fan voting was going to rear its ugly head at some point and i knew this was gonna happen because brave girls are still the underdogs but damn it's still disappointing seeing it. in general otherwise it looks like everyone else agreed with me, which i guess is nice. not super sure on what the next episode is going to be, since there were no performances in the preview, so i might not have a review next week. depends though; since i saw monika (!!!!!!!!!!!!!) in the preview, so if they do happen to do some kind of dance performance i'll probably talk about it at least a little bit!